


Reconciliation

by Jacen



Category: Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-10-10
Updated: 2012-10-10
Packaged: 2017-11-16 00:37:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/533553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jacen/pseuds/Jacen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After she was lead from the Scarecrows mad court, she had an appointment with an old friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reconciliation

**Author's Note:**

> Hello there! I do not own The Dark Knight Rises, Batman, Talia, Bane or anyone else mentioned in this fic. I hope you enjoy it-feedback would be wonderful! (Chapter Two is just about through editing at the moment)

Adopting the affectation of a wealthy philanthropist was no great feat for someone with Talia's training. To a point, it was simplicity itself. That point was marked by the return of Bruce Wayne. At the very threshold of victory, he'd arrived to drop a wrench in the works. Their masterstroke had become an immediate uncertainty. After so much time and such an investment, she refused to fail. The bright spot, such as it was, was the knowledge that their ruse remained ironclad. Wayne had sought her out to ensure her safety from Bane, an irony so great it required some concentration to summon up the expression of quiet confidence Miranda's face should wear as he left her in the care of old men and the feeble remains of the decadent wealthy. As her mind raced to check what little remained of their timeline, she was reminded of the pit and that dire, distant hope of the sky above. She felt like a child again, dread and terrible anticipation starting their work in her belly. Weakness though it was, she needed to reunite with her protector to set the world right once more. 

It was a challenge to appear frail and lean before the court of madmen while so distracted. She fed the fear wicking in the core of her, let it touch her eyes as sentence was passed, gave it leave to flicker higher when Bane called to his men to separate her and bring her along. Terror she should have felt to her bones (would have, were she soft, pampered Miranda) was reflected in the expressions of those she was cut from, though their fear for her was far more brutal and raw. They foresaw her tarnished and used. If only they had such personal concern for the citizens they claimed to guide and guard, this Gomorrah could have been forestalled.

She allowed the first phalanx of his guard to move her, still playing her role among the unfamiliar thugs. She flinched from their hands, disdain tainting her false fright. Not far ahead, she could make out the back of Bane's head, her old friend towering among his surrounding men. Breathing in through her nose, she straightened her back and squared her shoulders, watching as he sent one after another on their way. When his inner circle had been dismissed, he reached back, curling two fingers to summon the men on all sides of her and she with them. She did not wait for one to lay a hand on her, setting her jaw to restrain her smile as she stepped forward. 

"Into my room," he said as they reached him, nodding to a door that lead to what was once a conference room. The man at the head of the group opened the door and another moved to shove her through. She caught the sound of his foot scraping on the floor and stepped just right, keeping his hand from touching her as she passed between the guards and over the threshold. There was a grunt of laughter behind her, then the wet snap of cartilage. Her lips curved-she hadn't even heard Bane move before the screaming began. 

She cast a glance over her shoulder, barely bothering to look concerned, and watched him carefully step over the writhing body on the floor. He pulled the door closed, briefly meeting her eyes as he locked it, then he turned away and moved deeper into the room. "Marrakech," she heard him say as he discarded his jacket, and the smirk gracing her mouth became a fond grin.

"You don't owe me for Marrakech anymore," she replied, crossing her arms and following him. The room was as spartan as their quarters in Bhutan, with only a bed, a weapons rack and two barrack boxes as furnishing. The rest was left open, giving him plenty of space for training and planning. On one wall was a map of Gotham, marked and flagged, a tapestry of the degradation they had wrought upon Wayne's protectorate. 

"Hm," was his response as he turned to face her. She quirked an eyebrow at him, continuing her slow pace. He watched her advance as she closed to him, stopping only when her forehead met his shoulder. She sighed into his shirtsleeve, leaning against him and feeling the muscles of her back, tense with anticipation and worry, unknit themselves. "Corfu, then."

"Hm." She breathed in, then out, trying to bring that day to mind. "The boat...the first mate?" She asked as he brought his arm around her back, holding her just so. She could hear his heart, steady and even, as he thought.

"Yes. You took his knife before it occurred to him to use it," Bane said, curving his neck to watch as she uncrossed her arms and wrapped one across his stomach. "Corfu," he repeated with satisfaction. "One more debt repaid." He studied her throat and the set of her shoulders, then glanced past her to the window. There was something more to her arrival than their endgame and the list of potential causes was short. Though it was good to be in her company once more, her proximity was dangerous to their plans. That she had come to him, rather than using their many covert systems of communication, meant it had changed-or it was over. "He escaped," Bane stated, feeling the tension sing through her again. There had been fear on her at her arrival, but no more. Anger had taken its place, surging when he spoke. 

"He came to find me. To make sure I was safe," Talia answered, her voice muffled by his clothing. "He doesn't know." Her tone was flat, straightforward. She had gone stiff again, moving only enough to pull him closer. As her arm tightened, so did his.

"And?" He prompted, gently touching the corner of his mask to her scalp. She inhaled deeply, then exhaled, warming his chest. It was a stall, but he could not deny her this little thing.

"Do you want to leave?" Her accent, cultivated in Paris while she'd polished her cover, slurred the word into 'live'. The question was unchanged, regardless of her phrasing. Escaping Gotham tonight meant survival, but at the expense of their plan and their vengeance. They had sacrificed identities, soldiers, resources, themselves for eight years to build to this day. They were at the very cusp of victory, if only they remained to see it through to the bitter end. There would be no escape if they did not abandon their plans and leave tonight. For the space of several breaths, they were motionless, frozen in contemplation.

Finally, he broke their silence, drawing a breath that wheezed and hissed against her temple. "Would you join me?" He asked, watching her hair stir with his exhalation. She was otherwise still, her fingers tense at his hip. There was conflict in her, deep down. In her perfect lack of motion, he felt her loyalty to him contrasted with her need to rise in vengeance over Gotham City. When she came to her conclusion, her head tilted slightly and her eyelashes brushed against his arm. 

"No," she admitted, finally giving in and pressing her face fully against his chest. "I need to be sure." He responded with another bump of metal and plastic to her head, tipping her out of the shadow of his arm. "You would go alone."

"Then I would not go at all," he answered, loosening his grasp on her and letting his hand fall to her hip. Her fingers toyed with the hem of his shirt, then slipped underneath. She pressed her palm against his side, feeling the muscle and life of him and acknowledging to herself that their fate was truly sealed. Tomorrow, they would die with Gotham, Bruce Wayne and the final debt she owed to her fathers legacy. The fear tried to swell in her again, but her simmering fury smothered it down into nothing. What better end than to die removing this blighted rot from the surface of the earth? Certainly not to pass on, frail and whimpering for mercy. She pushed her hand against him, felt muscle move as he breathed, and used the rhythm to bring herself back to center. No, they would die together in glory. 

“I'll stay,” she confirmed to him, raising her eyes to meet his once more. She felt his breathing change and her own expression softened in response, the blistering future put aside for the warm present. Pausing ponderously, she considered their following stratagem, now that Wayne had returned. Doubtless he would be rallying his troops in preparation to storm Bane's stronghold-since they believed either there was no trigger or Bane held it, that was the most sensible plan of assault when paired with Gordon's attempt to mark the bomb-bearing truck. Should she distract them with one more weeping victim, a torn down woman emblematic of Gotham itself, or allow them their complacency? Though a hysterical Miranda might divert Bruce for an hour or so she found herself itching to shed the mask and was thus unable to give the idea any serious consideration. "They do not expect me to return, at least not...unbroken,” she said, letting her smirk bespeak her true thoughts. She idly caressed his side with her thumb.

His eyes crinkled at the corners. “And you no longer have the will to play to their expectations?” he replied, his hand moving up her back with remarkable delicacy for such a physically imposing man. Both the touch and his tone were teasing, though she gave him a sharp glance anyway. He read her so well.

"I have the will, old friend," she said, mock annoyance playing over her features as she curled her fingers and let her nails run over his belly. "But no interest." Her fingertips hooked on the waistband of his pants, her thumb finding its way to a loop. "They can wallow in their utter failure. There are debts here to repay.". He chuckled, reaching to trace two fingertips along her sleeve. She followed the motion, staring at the immaculate fabric as his touch passed over. The annoyance turned from play to real. She pulled back, lip curling, and began to hastily remove the last traces of Miranda Tate. Her decision was made. She would not spend another moment wrapped in that cloying lie.

"You owe me nothing," Bane said, watching without pretense as she shimmied out of her shirt, discarding it to one side. She paused, one hand on the zipper of her skirt, and turned her back to him. They shared a glance over her shoulder, then she looked away, flexing her back only the slightest bit when he approached and lay his hands on the lacework that crossed her spine. 

"I owe you everything, Bane," she murmured, holding perfectly still when he slipped the clasp and pressed his palm between her shoulders. Her eyes closed as she crossed her arms to reach the straps of the bra, then pulled them down and off.

He marveled at the fragility of her. A great many things appeared breakable in proximity to him, Talia al Ghul included. He knew from experience she was no such thing. Of course Bruce Wayne and Lucius Fox saw the weakness of their female contemporaries reflected in her, for she resembled those women so well once she was dressed in their finery. The men who wrung their hands in fear for her virtue hadn't borne witness as she executed traitors and lead squads of assassins through technological defenses unequipped for the Shadows. They had not felt her sinews strain to drag their bulk from collapsed caves. Nor had they seen her resplendent in blood and fire, twenty men dead at her feet. Though they had heard her speak of a better world, they had not had the privilege of her true voice raised to the heavens in exhortation of the justice and balance that was the League's mission. Those men admired a construct, a mere shade of the woman they should feel fortunate to prostrate themselves before.

His fingers roamed higher to trace the outline of the scar on her shoulder. "Surely you are not the only one of us in arrears." She flexed her shoulder back towards him, then hooked her fingers into her underwear and pushed them down her thighs. Her backside brushed against his hip, bringing a pulse of heat to his groin. There was a pensive silence as his fingers meandered away down her arm, finding the soft skin at the bend of her elbow and resting there. 

"Berezhany," she murmured, reaching back to graze her hand across his thigh. The smile had returned now that Miranda was gone.

"The bar you shouldn't have been in?" Bane wrapped his hand around her lower arm and turned her about. She stepped into him with the smoothness of a dancer, her palms roving under his shirt. As careful as any physician, Talia caressed him, pausing over the flex of his lower back. "The gun you shouldn't have had?" Her fingertip rested on the old scar as he laid his index finger over the barely visible notch in her hip.

"I didn't know they would frisk a girl. You had been gone too long," she murmured, flicking the hem of his shirt with the back of one hand. He complied readily with her unspoken request, grasping the fabric and pulling it over his head. She was pressed against him before he'd shaken it from his arm, unconsciously matching her breathing to his. Judging by the wrinkle of her nose, she disliked the mingled scent of them-of course her ruse had required her to become extravagant. Perfume and scented soap, when she'd lived for so long with only fresh water and a washcloth, must seem cloying over their natural smell. As she ran her nose against his rib, he wished he could share in her senses. The odor of anything but the antiseptic harshness of the gas she'd nicknamed 'venom' would be welcome, but most of all he wanted to know how the scent of her skin had changed. She'd been a child when she'd risen from him, her natural smell all warmth and new, under tones of his harsh sweat and the dust of the pit. He wanted to know her scent as a woman.

"You rescued me," he stated, his inflection flattened by the mask. She felt the deeper meaning anyway, her hand sliding around his back to pull herself closer. Her finger followed the waistband of his pants, finding and undoing the fasteners holding them closed. Nodding, she opened her mouth to exhale against his skin, pushing the garment down his hips. He accommodated her, shifting his stance as she eased them away, leaving him as bare as she was. They came together again, finding their habitual pose with only a few breaths of adjustment. She was softer in places, he harder, but the core of them was unchanged. "You are owed."

They moved slowly, simultaneously. His palms smoothed across her shoulderblades and down her back. She let her eyelashes flick against his skin as one hand grazed its way to the heavy warmth pulsing against her belly. "What about Puli Khumri?" She closed the question with her teeth against his collarbone, the highest point she could easily reach. She'd bitten him similarly in their heady, desperate coupling the night of their near miss in the aforementioned city. She had felt so much younger then, smaller after such a close brush with death. In that long-ago apartment, he had been her monolith, the same implacable force of nature he'd always been for her. Never had she seen someone so magnificent. In the pit he'd fought starving, desperate men on her behalf, none at full strength. In Puli Khumri he had exploded through a squad of armed militia as though they were cloth dolls. In that moment she saw what her father couldn't-the brilliance behind the 'beast'. His precision, his economy of movement focused his raw power in an unparalleled display of violence, always to their own ends. 

What had begun as gentle tracing became a steady, firm grip as she worked her hand along his length. She had a moment of doubt as she changed her pace, wondering if she'd grown too used to reading faces to understand him as she had before their lengthy separation. That concern dissipated as his breath hitched and his eyes shuttered. She bit his chest again to draw his attention, passing her thumb over his tip, then nudged him with her shoulder. “That was before Corfu,” he noted after the briefest pause. She called on distant memories of his tongue licking across his lips. 

"Was it?" She murmured, mirroring his steps as he began to walk backwards, guiding them towards his bare bed. Her wrist flexed on a strong downstroke and his body sagged to the mattress in response. He brought her with him, mastering his natural reactions to her practiced touch long enough to ensure their landing was a graceful one. Though the heated weight of need was roiling in his gut, he was the picture of restraint. There was no one he could put more faith in, no living person he trusted more than she. Nor was there anyone more transparent to him. He met her gaze easily as she stretched her leg across him, braced her palm on his chest and drew him into herself. His mask hissed as she bumped her nose against it, her mouth opening to suck in a breath. When she exhaled, it was with half-closed eyes locked on his. “Bane,” she breathed, rising and sinking, her thighs tensing against his body.

“Talia,” he responded, rocking underneath her. Her nails twitched against his skin and her eyes closed fully, her smile curving across her lips. He kept up the motion, the arm around her back sliding to a natural resting point at her hip. She rolled her hips again, drawing him deeper, then repeated the motion, setting her rhythm. Rather than seeking his mouth, as she might have with another lover, she gravitated towards his throat. Her lips settled over his pulse, odd and slow with the effects of the drug. Experience granted her the assurance that the numbing agent reached no further than it needed to-her protector could feel her kiss, her teeth as she expressed this new wave of emotion against his neck. Hearing her name in his voice cut away her doubts and her fears. Together, they truly were untouchable. No matter what came tomorrow, they could be together, unmasked, tonight.

“Puli Khumri,” she murmured again, nearly losing the words to a moan as he changed his angle, striking something inside of her that set off delicious tingles across her skin. “Moscow. Kuching. Artigas. Villarasa,” she recited heatedly into his neck, earning a deeper thrust with each name. When she ran out of memories of trysts gone by, she wrapped her arm around his shoulder and pressed her forehead to his collarbone, grinding her hips down onto him with eyes closed. 

Though he held his head still, the rest of Bane was hardly so. He pitched beneath her like an earthquake, the power of his motion concentrated between her thighs. The hand that wasn't gripping her waist was between her shoulderblades, holding her to him. Every breath was felt twice, in the press of her breasts to his chest and through her lips, against his neck. Her words called to mind hours of snatched time, sweat-sticky skin in the sun, heavy blankets in the winter. He recalled caresses, kisses, scratches, bites, bruises shared out between them. Victory assignations, harsh couplings borne of need, desperate fucking to ward off the chill of death's near miss and long afternoons of exploration and passion, she evoked every one from their halting first to cautious last.

Near-to-last. 

Instinct took him as she ran her nails from his solar plexus to his ribs. He tightened his hold on her hip, felt her adjust just so, and rolled them both, bracing himself atop her. The tip of her nose grazed at his earlobe as she brought her knees up, her heel finding its spurring-place in the small of his back. With a nudge, she urged him back into motion, her other leg winding serpentine around his thigh. She responded to his first thrust with a tremor, her neck arching, her fingers gripping him tighter to her. Her hips bucked in time with his, towing him closer. His world narrowed to the room, the bed, then to her eyes, open once again. Still clinging, refusing to give any more space than was required, she smoothed her palm up his neck to cup the back of his head. Hand splayed, she guided him closer, breathing against the mask. Her lips grazed the metal and plastic as control began to slip, a warm, heavy feeling beginning within her. The final build of her tension begat his, a quiver beginning in the muscles of his legs.

She was still deep within his gaze when sensation overtook her. It was as though her body opened wider, swallowed him up, then sealed around him in spasming shudders. The last mask slipped away and she was bared to him in all her glory and fear. Her eyes, fluttering with overwhelming pleasure, gave him everything she wouldn't speak, an affection beyond love, a light in his darkness. Her legs locked him tight as she bucked beneath him, her breath coming in short moans. He felt the world resuming its close around him as her inner muscles did and warned her with a grunt, but she was unrelenting. She took him to her end, choking on a sobbing cry as her body clenched, then sagged in quivering relief.

Soft and spent as she was, she still moved to his rhythm. They were no longer so urgent, undulating in a sinuous wave. As her awareness returned, her fingers stroked from the back of his head to the strap leading to the bottom of the mask. They followed the plastic, keeping his face close as she touched her lips to the metal of the pipes. He lowered his eyes, avoiding her watchful expression until the heel of her hand slid under his chin and urged him back to her. She felt the tension sing across his abdomen, her depths stirring in kind, and squeezed her thighs against his waist. As he had seen her fear, she now saw his weakness as his body pitched against hers. She held him with her arms and her gaze, preventing further attempts to cut away. His breathing became harsh behind the filters, his eyes glassy with need as his thrusts became short jabs. A gasp preceded a groan when his knee shifted and he stroked against her most sensitive places. Overtaxed as she was, she couldn't control her response, bearing down on him as he pulsed within her. Stars blinked behind her eyelids in time with her nerve-collapsing finish.

The silence that came naturally to them was broken as he slid his arm under her shoulders and rolled them to their sides. She remained pressed close, feeling more than hearing the slowing beat of his heart. Her protector, her warrior, her martyr, her lover. As he bent his head towards her, she tipped her face up, pressing a kiss to his mask. “Gotham,” she murmured nearly apologetically. The intonation earned her a raised eyebrow before his fingers caressed her cheek, thumb pausing against the corner of her lip. The smile she returned him was a tender reflection of her afterglow. 

“Gotham returns us to balance,” he answered with surety. With all that was yet to come, being able to face the culmination of their plans together affirmed his faith. No obstacle had yet withstood their combined might. This last would be no different. For Gotham's ruin, they would be legends. That was more than enough to cancel all debts, between them and their ghosts alike. She worked her way silently back into her place against him, breathing a content sigh once she was comfortable. This physical union, the last between them, was a final sacrament that cleaved them to one another and their shared purpose. His mask hissed in time with his slowing breath as she preceded him into sleep, the change in her breathing a gentle susurration. One hand pressed into her back, tracking the strength of her heartbeat as he had since the pit. With that reassuring throb against his palm, he surrendered to sleep.


End file.
